The Former Good Speller with an Accent

I used to consider myself pretty good at spelling and even won a spelling bee or two in my ancient history. However, this has all changed at work as my work computer is set to Australian English rules. I now get that disconcerting red squiggly line in Word documents that shouts at me "Ha! You've messed up! I know the right answer, but won't provide it unless you right click the mouse over me or run spell check". Okay, so maybe that's a bit of a paraphrase, but that's what it feels like. I have been put in my place with enough words now that I've lost count of my ineptitude. I thought I was getting the hang of it (anything ending in 'or' like color now ends in 'our', an 'ize' ending is 'ise', and the 'er' ending is quite often 're' as in 'centre'), but I discovered there are some other one-offs that keep catching me. The word today was installment. Apparently in Australia it only has one 'l'. Then there was totaled. In Australia it has two 'l's. Huh? How do I ever remember which words have an extra 'l' and which ones have one taken away? I already have to remember to stay on the left side of the road - what more do they want from me?!

One of the more fascinating things about being in Australia is they like to hear our accent. I thought it was just me who enjoyed listening to them talk, but they have told us on several occasions that they like hearing us talk. Weird! Eric and I are hearing their accent enough now that it's beginning to sound normal except for a few who must come from somewhere that has a much stronger Australian accent. We may be understanding the words now, but we are sometimes a little slow on the uptake with some of their everyday phrases or choice of words. It does make for some "interesting" conversation.

We move into our place on Saturday. I think it will take us about 10 minutes to move in give or take a minute. With no furniture, unpacking will consist of moving the suitcases somewhere and leaving them open on the floor. Voila! Done in a snap. The furniture will start arriving on Wednesday so we'll be roughing it until then. Guess we'll be doing our own version of Ethan's term for it - urban camping. We'll have all the comforts of camping with the exception of having electricity and bathrooms (oops, proper word here is toilets or restroom).

As I keep saying, we'd love to have visitors, but be advised we might need some time to make it just a bit more livable!